TerraDrive Universe:User page
The TerraDrive Universe provides user pages to facilitate communication among participants in its project to build a science fiction universe. If your username is Example: * Your user page is the page at User:Example (or ) * Your user talk page is the page at User talk:Example (or ) * Your user subpages are pages of the form User:Example/Lipsum ( ) or User talk:Example/Lipsum ( ), and are listed at and . * Your user space is the collection of all the above. :Note: "''Your" in this context means associated with you, not belonging to you.'' The and special pages will take each user to her or his own user and user talk pages, respectively. Others will not be able to find your user page using , they will be able to visit it only by going to User:Example (for the example user). Details about you generally should not go in the main namespace, which is reserved for encyclopedic-style content about the TerraDrive Universe. If you would prefer not to have a user page, then it is recommended that you redirect it to your user talk page for the convenience of other editors. What may I have on my user page? Your userpage is for anything that is compatible with the TerraDrive Universe project. It is a mistake to think of it as a homepage as is not a blog, webspace provider, or social networking site. Instead, think of it as a way of organizing the work that you are doing on the articles in the TerraDrive Universe, and also a way of helping other editors to understand with whom they are working. Some people add information about themselves as well, possibly including contact information (email, instant messaging, etc), a photograph, their real name, their location, information about their areas of expertise and interest, likes and dislikes, homepages, and so forth. (If you are concerned with privacy, you may not want to and are by no means required to emulate this.) You can use your user page to help you to use Wikipedia more effectively: to list "to do" information, works in progress, reminders, useful links, and so forth. It is also good for experimenting with markup (that is, as a personal sandbox). Another common use is to let people know about your activities in the TerraDrive Universe, and your opinions. So you might include current plans, a journal of recent activities in the TerraDrive Universe, and your (constructive) opinions on how certain TerraDrive Universe articles or policies should be changed. If you won't be developing the TerraDrive Universe for a while, drop a note on your user page to that effect. You might want to add quotations that you like, or a picture, or some of your favorite TerraDrive Universe articles or images (freely licensed only – see the What can I not have on my user page section below), or the like. Others may also edit your user page. In the event that your editing privileges on Wikipedia are revoked, a notice of this may be placed on your user page. You are welcome to include a link to your personal home page, although you should not surround it with any promotional language. Note: user pages are often reached through user signatures on talk pages. What about user subpages? If you need more pages, you can create subpages. More or less, you can have anything here that you might have on your user or user talk page. Examples: *A work in progress, until it is ready to be released (this is typically not necessary, though some people do this *Archives of user talk *Tests; for testing a template, make it a separate subpage. *Sections of your user page that are big enough to require their own page, e.g. a page of awards you have received or pictures you have taken. What may I not have on my user page? Generally, you should avoid substantial content on your user page that is unrelated to the TerraDrive Universe. The TerraDrive Universe is not a general hosting service, so your user page is not a personal homepage. Your page is about you as a 'verser. Examples of unrelated content include: * A weblog relating your non-TDU activities * Extensive discussion not related to TDU * Excessive personal information (more than a couple of pages) unrelated to TDU * Extensive personal opinions on matters unrelated to TDU, wiki philosophy, collaboration, free content, etc. * Polemical statements: Libelling people on userpages is a bad idea, and in fact, using userpages to attack people or campaign for or against anything or anyone is a bad idea. * Images which you are not free to use (see below) In general, if you have material that you do not wish for others to edit, or that is otherwise inappropriate for the TerraDrive Universe, it should be placed on a personal web site. Many free and low-cost web hosting, email, and weblog services are widely available, and are a good alternative for content unrelated to the TerraDrive Universe. The TerraDrive Universe community is generally tolerant and offers fairly wide latitude in applying these guidelines to regular participants. Particularly, community-building activities that are not strictly "on topic" may be allowed, especially when initiated by committed Wikipedians with good edit histories. At their best, such activities help us to build the community, and this helps to build the resource. But at the same time, if user page activity becomes disruptive to the community or gets in the way of the task of building a science fiction universe, it must be modified to prevent disruption. Do not put your userpage or subpages, including work-in-progress articles, into categories used by TerraDrive Universe articles. Be careful of templates and stub notices that put a work-in-progress article into categories. You can "quote" categories by adding a colon before "Category", like this: Category:Weapons. This turns it into an ordinary link. Templates and stub notices can be turned into links to themselves by putting tl| ("tl" followed by a pipe character) in front of their names, like this: Copies of other pages While userpages and subpages can be used as a development ground for generating new content, this space is not intended to indefinitely archive your preferred version of disputed or previously deleted content. In other words, the TerraDrive Universe is not a free web host. Private copies of pages that are being used solely for long-term archival purposes may be subject to deletion. Similarly, pages kept in userspace should not be designed to functionally substitute for articles or TDU space pages. If you find that your user subpage has become as useful as a normal article or project page, consider moving it into the appropriate namespace or merging it with other similar pages already existing there. One should never create links from a mainspace article to any userpage, nor should a userspace essay be used as the primary documentation for any TerraDrive Universe policy, guideline, practice, or concept. Images on user pages Please do not include non-free images (copyrighted images lacking a free content license) on your user page or on any subpage thereof (this is official policy and the usual wide user page latitude does not apply, see TDU:Copyright for details). Non-free images found on a user page (including user talk pages) may be removed (preferably by replacing it with a link to the image) from that page without warning. Inappropriate content There is broad agreement that you may not include in your user space material that is likely to bring the project into disrepute, or which is likely to give widespread offense. You do have more latitude in user space than elsewhere, but remember: don't be a dick about it. Extremely offensive material may be removed on sight by any editor. Ownership and editing of pages in the user space As a tradition, the TerraDrive Universe offers wide latitude to users to manage their user space as they see fit. However, pages in user space still do belong to the community: * Contributions to talk pages are transferred to Technomancer Press who licenses them back to the general public, just as articles are. * Other users may edit pages in your user space, although by convention your user page will usually not be edited by others. * Community policies, including TDU:No personal attacks, apply to your user space just as they do elsewhere. Article content policies generally do not. * In some cases, material that does not somehow further the goals of the project may be removed (see below), as well as edits from banned users. In general it is considered polite to avoid substantially editing another's user page without their permission. Some users are fine with their user pages being edited, and may even have a note to that effect. Other users may object and ask you not to edit their user pages, and it is probably sensible to respect their requests. The best option is to draw their attention to the matter on their talk page and let them edit their user page themselves if they agree on a need to do so. In some cases a more experienced editor may make a non-trivial edit to your userpage, in which case that editor should leave a note on your talk page explaining why this was done. This should not be done for trivial reasons. Removal of warnings Policy does not prohibit users from removing comments from their own talk pages, although archiving is preferred. The removal of a warning is taken as evidence that the warning has been read by the user. Deleted warnings can still be found in the page history. Use of page protection for user pages As with article pages, user pages are occasionally the targets of vandalism, or, more rarely, edit wars. When edit wars or vandalism persist, the affected page should be protected from editing. Most user page vandalism occurs in retaliation for a contributor's efforts to deal with vandalism. Administrators may protect their own user pages when appropriate, and are permitted to edit protected pages in user space. Sometimes a non-administrator's user page may be the target of vandalism. Such pages should be listed at TDU:Requests for page protection and may then be protected by a moderator. Note that repeatedly inserting copyrighted content on your own user page after being notified that doing so violates our policy is also considered vandalism, and may result in it being protected. Vandalism of talk pages is less common. Usually such vandalism should merely be reverted. In rare cases, protection may be used but is considered a last resort given the importance of talk page discussions to the project. Protected pages in user space should be unprotected as soon as practical. Removal of inappropriate content If the community lets you know that they would rather you delete some content from your user space, you should consider doing so — such content is only permitted with the consent of the community. After you have been here for a while, and written lots of great articles, the community may be more inclined to let you get away with it. Alternatively, you could move the content to another site, and link to it. If you do not cooperate, the inappropriate content will eventually be removed, either by editing the page (if only part of it is inappropriate), or by redirecting it to your main user page (if it is entirely inappropriate). What to do if you find someone else's user page being used inappropriately If you are considering nominating a user page or personal image for deletion because it appears to be used as a personal web page or a blog, please be aware that many editors will consider this a personal attack on themselves, because they may believe they "own" their userpages. Be very careful not to scare a noob away from the TerraDrive Universe, and try to assume good faith that they are merely trying to share information about themselves. Try to resolve the issue on the user's talk page first. Also note that a limited amount of personal information (perhaps a short biography) and a freely licensed or public domain tasteful personal photograph or two are usually allowed on a user's page in order to show the user's human side, but only if the page complies with other TerraDrive Universe policies. Users with most of their contribution edits outside their user space should be given more leeway in this regard than users whose edits consist solely or mostly of user space edits. And always remember that a user's user page being used as a personal web page is not in itself a deletion criterion. How do I create a user subpage? If a page is called "PAGE", a subpage of "PAGE" with the name "SUBPAGE" would be located at "PAGE/SUBPAGE". User:Example/Lipsum is an example of a user subpage for User:Example. Your user page, if it exists yet, is . If you wanted to create a user subpage called "Sandbox", you would find it . New editors and experienced TDU developers can use subpages to their user page to develop templates and articles, test markup, and create new articles before moving them to the main TerraDrive Universe space. There are several common uses for user subpages: #To place user page-appropriate content on a separate page in order to avoid having a large user page or merely not to conspicuously display it. #To plan large changes to articles, new articles, or allow developers to draft graphical layout overhauls. #To delineate views on the TerraDrive Universe, its functioning, or behavior of 'versers in general. #To test wikimarkup. User pages and user subpages can be transcluded and , so they behave like , and can be tested as such. Pages meant for arbitrary testing are called sandboxes; there is a sandbox for general testing, but not for long-term development. To link to a user subpage called "Sandbox" from your , place the text : /Sandbox on your page, or use a piped link with the same source. Make sure to experiment on your user page, not on this page! Do not forget the first forward slash or you will put the page in the as a regular article and will have to ask for deletion if you save what you write (by tagging the page with ). If your user page does not have a subpage named "Sandbox", the link will appear to be red, indicating that a page has no content, and if you just navigate away without saving any content the page will not be created and there is nothing to delete. Sandboxes are useful for testing changes to pages, but once you are sure of yourself regarding an edit, you can just click on the "Show preview" button, and proof-read thoroughly. How do I delete a user subpage? You can easily request the deletion of any of your user subpages (or possibly your user page) by adding to the top of page. Alternatively, you might consider simply making the page redirect to your user page. This is normally sufficient for most people's needs. There may however be a reason for the page to be kept. Only tag for deletion your own personal pages, and only if you have a genuine reason for requesting a personal subpage of yours be deleted. Pages which have formerly been in a different namespace and moved to a subpage of the user namespace may not be deleted in this way. These must be listed either at Articles for deletion by using the tag. On the other hand, if you would just like them to be moved back, then by all means ask at TDU:Requested moves. How do I delete my user and user talk pages? Where there is no significant abuse and no administrative need to retain the personal information, you can request that your own user page and user subpages be deleted. Most frequently, this occurs when a longterm contributor decides to leave. Just add to the page: and include a reason why on your talk page. An moderator will then delete it after checking that the page does not contain evidence of policy violations that may need to be kept. If there has been no disruptive behavior meriting the retention of that personal information, then the moderator can delete the page straight away in order to eliminate general public distribution of the history containing the information. If a user page was deleted because a contributor left, it may be restored by a moderator if the contributor returns, particularly if the history contains evidence of policy violations. As a matter of practice user talk pages are generally not deleted, barring legal threats or other grievous violations that have to be removed for legal reasons; however, exceptions to this can be and are made on occasion for good reason. User pages that have been deleted can be recreated with a blank page. What other information is accessible to others from my user page? In addition to the usual information accessible from an article page such as page history, "Discuss this page" and the like, other users can also click "User contributions" (in the sidebar or at the bottom of the page) to see what contributions you have made to the TerraDrive Universe over time. Please note that having your user page deleted does not delete this list of your contributions. Visitors to your user page can also click "E-mail this user" if you have opted in to be able to send and receive email.